For-profit education under fire

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For-profit colleges have been on the hot seat lately for collecting billions in revenue from federal student loans while too often leaving students saddled with debt and ill-equipped to get jobs. Half the students enrolled at the largest for-profit schools leave without a diploma within four months.

Santa Ana-based Corinthian Colleges is one of the companies under the spotlight. Its colleges charge some of the industry's highest tuition and steer students into expensive private loans that half of them eventually default on. Corinthian is on the borderline of federal benchmarks that could cut off its access to federal student loans, a situation that has sent its stock plummeting.

Jack Massimino, Corinthian's chief executive, believes some of the criticism is motivated by the political belief that for-profit companies should play no role in education. He noted that 50,000 students graduated from Corinthian's campuses last year and 33,000 got jobs in their field.

“If we were not-for-profit,” he said, “we would have statues erected to us.”

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